Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 200

Every project in Miami is now a branded residence. This is not exactly true. But it's mostly true. What I heard over the last two days at Elevate is that Miami is the second most active city in the world when it comes to branded residences (after Dubai).

So much so that when a developer sits down with a prospective sales team, one of the first questions they will ask is, "cool, so what's the brand?" Is it Elle? Dolce & Gabbana? Or Pagani? You need a brand. And on average, the end pricing premium is somewhere between 20-30%, in exchange for paying a 3-5% licensing fee (on total revenue).

This makes sense. Brands have value. And I agree with Daniel Langer -- who presented at the conference -- that there is "added luxury value" when it comes to brands that are truly premium and luxury. It's the only way to explain why certain goods & services command a premium. Consumers don't generally pay more for something for the hell of it. They pay more because they believe that they are getting more value.

One interesting example that Daniel gave is a research study involving two groups of people looking at basically the same photo of a woman getting of a car. The only difference is that in the first photo, she is getting out of a Volkswagen, and in the second photo, she is getting out of some fancy car. I can't remember which one, but just know that it's fancy and expensive.

Now, the two groups had no idea this was a study related to "luxury" and they had no idea there was another group and photo, but when comparing the results, the differences were measurable. The fancy car improved perception of the woman in virtually every dimension: she was thought to be more competent, intelligent, attractive, and the list goes on. This is interesting. It demonstrates that brands matter.

So again, it's no surprise that developers are "borrowing" hotel, fashion, car, and many other brands to strengthen the perceived value of their projects. It makes economic sense. But at the same time, I think there are different ways to go about this and I worry about the long-term value and resiliency of some of these branded projects.

For example, in some cases, the brand just seems like a superficial add-on to an otherwise banal project. And in these situations, it may work out for the developer in the short term, but at some point, people will come to the realization that there isn't actually anything differentiated.

To do it well, you want the brand to permeate the project and you need it to survive after completion. This is why hotel brands are a natural fit and what started this category -- they have property brand standards and they are typically there after construction is complete and the building is operational.

There's also the peculiarity that in, adopting a branded residence approach, the developer is by default relegating their own brand to a backseat position. And so there are developers, including one panelist at this conference, who flat out reject this approach -- they want to manage, control, and grow their own brand, not somebody else's.

This is a reasonable approach, but it's a longer game. Brand equity isn't built overnight; it takes time and consistency. Not every developer has the benefit of being in this position, or maybe they don't care to be. They want to remain entrepreneurial and nimble and just tool up on a project-specific basis.

So I guess the answer to the question of whether to brand or not is that it depends on your approach and on how you execute. But regardless, know that this is a massive business and that Miami is one of the branded residence capitals of the world. In the most desirable submarkets, it certainly feels a lot like table stakes.

Canada is a metric country. We started adopting the metric system in 1970 and in 1971 we got the Weights and Measures Act . But even though we are officially a metric country, it is still common to use the imperial system in everyday life. For example, my driver's license says 190 cm, but I would never tell someone this, unless I were in Europe. I would use feet and inches.

The other area where it is common to use the imperial system is in construction and real estate. Officially, all drawings submitted to a municipality need to be in metric. Typically millimeters are used, meaning a common residential floor-to-floor height in Toronto works out to something like 2950 or 3000 if you want 9 feet clear to the underside of each slab.

As you can see, in design and construction it is very common to switch back and forth between millimeters and feet/inches. Marketing floor plans are typically always in square feet as well. A lot of this, I'm sure, has to do with our historical ties to the UK and our deep integration with the US market.

But the reality is that switching back and forth is inefficient, and imperial weights and measures feel like a random and outdated system. Nate Bargatze does a hilarious job of highlighting that in this SNL skit called Washington's Dream . So I don't know about you, but I'm ready to go full metric. I wonder what it will take for the US to finally get on board with the rest of the world.

(Thanks to my business partner Lucas for sharing the above skit with me. I'm a big Nate Bargatze fan.)

Cover photo by patricia serna on Unsplash

I just landed in Miami for the annual Elevate conference that is taking place here at the Fontainebleau Hotel. I'm an ambassador for the event and I'm also moderating a panel on Tuesday afternoon about resident experiences in multi-family buildings. So for the next few days, I suspect I'll be writing about the conference and some of my takeaways.

I love Miami. It's one of my favorite cities. I love the weather. I love the vibe. I love the entrepreneurial spirit. And I love that Spanish can feel like the first language here. It's almost always the first thing I hear when I get off the plane and there's something oddly comforting about that even though I don't speak a word of it. Maybe once I've mastered French I'll turn to Spanish.

What's less great about Miami, though, is the traffic. Between Art Basel and the herd of elephants on the beach that everyone is talking about right now, the traffic in this city is bad. Like, Toronto bad. As I write this post, I'm looking out the window at Collins Avenue, and it's been completely jammed the entire time.

The Miami region is car oriented and car-oriented cities do not deal well with sudden spikes in demand. It usually breaks them. They're also harder to scale up. So this region will have some big decisions to make as it continues to grow. That said, I'm noticing a lot more bike lanes across Miami and Miami Beach, and lot more people cycling and using e-scooters. That's good.

I know there's a fairly large contingent of Toronto real estate people here this week, so if you're also in town and attending Elevate, please do get in touch.